Journals – and a Yudu machine

I finished a first journal today, the one you can see in the photo above. I already listed it on Etsy, and realized that I have a lot of tidying up to do on Etsy as well.

Then I tested new (Chinese) thread. It is probably waxed linen, although at some part of the description they called it hemp, in other parts linen. Since it is very cheap, I thought I should try it. it comes in a very limited range of colours, though, and for the time being, I’ll probably not add them to my shop, althought the test wasn’t too bad.

(There is something oddly satisfying in photographing watercolour boxes, and I like adding them to my pictures.)

And then, my new (old) yudu machine arrived:

If you don’t know what this is, see here:

I am very excited about this newest addition to my studio. Just like the gocco machine (I suppose) the most expensive thing about these machines are the consumables. Buying the original stuff is prohibiting, especially with the British pound having lost so much value, and seeing that I would have to import a lot of the stuff from the US. I’ll probably need a new screen (with a finer mesh) anyway, so I might purchase one bucketful of original stuff. And then I’ll have to look into what others do. Apparently there are a lot of “yudu hacks”. For example people use liquid photosensitive emulsion like you would do with other screen printing instead of the stick and peel emulsion sheet that you can get for the yudu. Apparently other water soluble screenprinting paints work just as well – or maybe better since I am not going to print T-shirts with mine. But even with non-yudu equipment it is still a comparably compact (well, bigger than expected, to be honest) exposure unit.

In any case, I am itching to try my first prints on it!